It was going to be about trains.

I have romanticized trains for as long as I can remember. I don’t know when my love for them started, or how my love for them even got nurtured, because I didn’t grow up taking them (although my mom just told me we did a long train trip together before I could even walk, so maybe that sparked something in my almost brand-new brain, who knows.) I have long convinced myself that if I could just spend a month traveling around the country by rail, that I could write the great American novel, inspired by the gentle rocking and the whispered chug along the tracks. I have convinced myself that that is truly the only thing I need to craft a masterpiece is a long, uninterrupted train ride. (This, and/or a month in Manhattan in a brick-laden loft, plants hanging from the rafters, colorful carpets and loud neighbors and flashing neon from the bar across the way.) The characters would be formed by the passengers, back stories imagined and woven together based on their stops, their clothes, or from watching the woman and daughter waving at eachother through the window until we turned the bend. I have painted my own self as a mysterious passenger, typing away as the countryside ebbed and flowed from rolling green hills to flat, brown fields, people wondering who I am, creating their own stories about me. Who is that woman? Is she an author? Is she writing a book? Have I read anything she’s written? Maybe she’s a spy. Maybe a food critic. You get the picture- I would, in short, be mysterious, my fingers clicking away, creating my own story within a story because in my head, this is how an author, since the beginning of time, creates something worth reading.

So, this week, when I had the choice to fly or travel by train between Oakland and Orange County, I opted for the train. I was scheduled to take the bus from Oakland to San Luis Obispo, where I would transfer to the Pacific Surfliner, and take the train the remainder of the way to Santa Ana. Whereas a flight would take just over an hour, I committed to the 13 hours of transit for all the reasons listed above. To write, to be mysterious, to write about being mysterious, or to write about how I took the train because its romantic and nostalgic and all-American. So, you might be surprised to hear that I didn’t write a single thing. I’m surprised as well. Instead, for 13 hours, I did the opposite. I did nothing.

Nothing isn’t entirely fair. I did something, I just didn’t read or write like I thought I would. Instead, I listened to music, and curled up and watched the great state of California play through the panoramic windows, a nature film just out of reach, and I was still, replaying parts of my life that I had forgotten about, or were too painful to sit with. And as anyone who has just sat with their feelings knows, sitting with your feelings is work and it is hard, so I won’t say that I did nothing, because I believe I did a lot more. It just didn’t look like it from the outside- instead of being the mysterious writer woman, I looked like a girl in a music video, head against the train window, a single tear streaming down her cheek. (At least in my head this is how it looked, although I don’t think one single person paid any attention to me, which is fine, how I pay attention to myself is more than enough.)

I grew up here, in California, but there was something really neat about seeing parts of it I had never seen before, parts that are closer to the water’s edge than the road, that are only accessible by train. I didn’t expect to be in such a state of peace and contemplation- so much so that I couldn’t break my focus. The ocean casting a spell that I couldn’t slip away from- captive to its beauty, its waves, the reflection of the setting sun it it’s expansiveness, it’s kelp beds and its mossy rocks sitting on the shoreline, ocean foam bubbling around the edges. I looked for whales, I looked for otters. I looked for my past and my present and my future, and I saw all of it. And with that, I felt everything that I needed to feel.

From Oakland to Santa Ana, I have lived so many lives.

Standing at the train station in Jack London Square, waiting for my bus, a flood of nostalgia awakening in my body. Oakland, where I got divorced, rode bikes with girl gangs and fell in love with shitty boys and did drugs and drank a lot and stood in line for hours for $13 dollar tattoos, and where I decided to move to Texas. Oakland, where I had cheap rent and got my first dog and didn’t care about much except for having fun and being in my twenties. Even though my Oakland memories take place later in time than my Central Coast memories, or my Orange County memories, this trip started there, so I somehow went backwards, reliving, and rewriting my history through the lense of a woman that is now almost 44.

Then drive between the Bay Area and San Luis Obispo familiar, because the first place I lived on my own was in Pismo Beach. Before I found a job there, I would spend my weeks in the Bay, working at Whole Foods, then drive down to the Central Coast, a load of belongings with me, to spend my weekends and move in gradually to my first apartment. The Central Coast, where I thought I would end up marrying one boy and ended up marrying another, and as the train passed the restaurant we stole coffee mugs from, one more goodbye, another memory raised from the dead and put back to rest. The Central Coast, where I met one of my closest friends, my pea in a pod, where our lives were so simple and the biggest choice we needed to make was what time would we meet in the middle for coffee, and what cocktail we wanted that afternoon, a friendship forged through Raspberry Lemon Drops and indie rock bands, until we decided to move back up to San Francisco and go to college, where then we still met in the middle for coffee and bagel sandwiches and chats under red umbrellas. Pismo Beach, where I had a tab at the coffee shop because it was still very much a small town, and where I was equal distance to my parents. Passing the Grover Beach station, where another friend and I walked to the bar because it seemed close, but it was actually several miles, but being drunk and in your twenties made it ok. Pismo Beach, where I lived above a restaurant and a block from the ocean and smoked cigarettes on my porch on the weekends avoiding the tourists but watching them from my perch.

I let these memories reach their fingers around my heart a bit, squeezing gently, and it was OK. Nostalgia is strange. It is fickle and dangerous and comforting and peaceful all at the same time. I don’t think enough people discuss this. It’s very abstract- nostalgia- and hard to discuss in a lot of ways. I think it is very hard to describe longing for something that you don’t actually want in the present day, but all the other versions of ourselves that still exist within our souls might still want. I feel like that is the best way to describe nostalgia. 22-year-old me still lives inside of me, and she misses being the life of the party, and she doesn’t know why we can’t meet in the middle at the coffee shop anymore because she doesn’t understand that the older versions of ourselves have moved to new states and towns. I texted my good friend from the train station, and she said, “back when we were young,” and we agreed that a part of us will live there forever. So maybe that is what nostalgia is, grieving our youth, and maybe that is what makes it delicate- that you can grieve what you no longer have, while still being happy and fulfilled in the life you are living. Maybe, I’m not an expert.

I’m not here to share every memory I’ve ever had, but I do think nostalgia could make its own entire essay, but I don’t want to do that today. I don’t even know what the point of this one is, honestly. It was going to be about trains. Then it turned into memory lane and abstract concepts. And since I started writing this two days ago, and a lot has happened since, I am not entirely sure where I was planning on ending this when I first sat down. Writing can be like that. So, I guess that’s just going to be it, a well-intentioned essay that went around the bend a bit- from spokesperson for the rails to emo kid in a matter of moments. Maybe that is the point. Maybe that is why I love trains- is that there is something so soft about them, that they are hard not to love. Maybe it taps into our childhood somehow. Maybe they bring up memories of putting pennies on tracks or stories of adventure; maybe there is a reason so many kids are obsessed with them- maybe the rhythm of the train on the tracks sounds like a heartbeat and reminds us on some level of being in the womb. Maybe there is a reason they are in so many plot-lines- they are part of our collective story. I don’t know, but I welcome your insight.

While at the station, there was an older man that I can safely assume had high levels of autism, and I have never seen someone so excited about the train coming, and maybe he just showed the world what we all feel on the inside. The train coming promises adventure. It is exciting. Craning your neck to see if you can see its headlight heading your way, and that joy when you finally can. The uptick of your pulse as it whizzes by until it comes to a stop, blowing your hair around your face in expectation, then climbing onboard when it does. Then as it takes off again, with a small jolt to let you know adventure is out there, you are on your way. You don’t have to wait until someone turns the seatbelt sign off to go get a snack or a drink or wait until 10,000 feet to use a device. In my opinion, trains are not only the lead character in a timeless romance, but the superior way to travel. What else screams “luxury” than not being in a hurry to get anywhere? I’m sure people that travel in private jets might disagree, but I’ll tell you something: when I am rich and famous, I will be traveling by train whenever possible. But maybe it is because my brain is designed to create stories, and it just doesn’t work the same way on an airplane, I don’t know. But I guess the train did its job anyway. It inspired me.

I didn’t spend 13 hours writing on the train like I thought I would, but I am writing about it now, and I have no regrets. I’m glad that I didn’t spend the day on my phone, scrolling away and missing the scenery. I’m glad that I didn’t read, or write, and that I let myself be captivated by the California coastline- a lover that never lets me go, enamored by its charm time and time again. I’m glad that I let myself sit with whatever feelings came to the surface, coaxed by the simplicity of the day, finding a safe place to expose themselves. When I first booked the ticket, I thought, I might regret this, 13 hours is a long time. And it is. But I don’t regret anything about that decision. I got to be present, still, letting the minutes tick by, inching me closer to my next adventure in Orange County, where I would go to wine tastings with friends from a different time of my youth, reminiscing about how we don’t even remember how we came to be friends, and where I would sit in heated recliners with my dad at the movies, and smell the salt ocean air as we walked to the restaurant to eat lunch on the water. Orange County, where I was born and spent the first 14 years of my life, where I became a sister, and where I became a child of divorce; where I was hospitalized for depression and hospitalized again for overdosing on pills. Where I started to discover myself, testing limits, finding my personal style, and being surrounded by, what I deemed at the time, to be some of the coolest girls I had ever seen in my life; as a freshman, almost all the older girls are cooler, but these girls were top tier in cool.

It’s strange to think of my life in segments, when it is so much more- it is broken into experiences, disasters, growth, falling down, getting back up; it is broken up into phases of beach bunny, emo kid, city girl, bookstore snob, skater chick, country girl, punk rock girl, writer, hairdresser, Texas and California. All of it makes me, and maybe when I say we are still all of the people we used to be and that is where nostalgia grows, this is what I mean. But I can still break it all down into segments: 14 years in Orange County (minus the three spent in Oceanside,) 14 years in the Bay Area (minus the year and a half in Pismo, which is very clearly a very large part of my story- it’s own island, really, for all of you that have seen Inside Out), and the 15 years in Texas. Titles and subtitles, footnotes and references.

I knew there was something important about taking the train. Even when my mom offered to pay for a flight, so that I could get to where I was going faster, I knew that I needed the train. I’m glad I listened. It needed to be a central character in my story, for this vacation- the transitory pages connecting north to south, east to west, past to present, present to future. And maybe one day I will take that cross country journey, and write the Great American Novel and not just look out the window all day like the dreamer and feeler that I am, but this time, this trip, it was exactly what I needed.